ARMISTICE DAY 2011

Today is remembered as Armistice Day, celebrating the 93rd Anniversary of the suspension of hostilities, but not the end of World War One at 11am on 11 November 1918. You may not know but the Armistice itself was prolonged or extended, a further Three times before Peace was finally ratified in January 1920.

That timeline is :
First Armistice (11 November 1918 - 13 December 1918)
First prolongation of the armistice (13 December 1918 - 16 January 1919)
Second prolongation of the armistice (16 January 1919 - 16 February 1919)
Third prolongation of the armistice (16 February 1919 - 10 January 1920)
Peace was ratified at 4:15 p.m. on 10 January 1920.

Many of us are familiar with some of the words of a famous poem by Lawrence Binyon which will today be recited at Memorial and Remembrance Services throughout NZ, the rest of the Commonwealth and the UK amongst many other places. We may be less familiar with the entire Poem entitled ‘The Fallen’, which reads

For The Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Laurence Binyon (1869-1943).

I’m also going to offer up one of my bits of writing which I’ve posted somewhere here previously and invite you to share any thoughts or writing etc, which you may have too.

Sons and Brothers All.

‘Tis only fitting this madness ends
Not by cordite but by stroke of pen
At the appointed hour of the appointed day
But why too late for oh so many?

Though at my side in my minds eye
They march alive, still young and proud
Our Fallen battalions over-strength, our
Shattered Legions of eviscerated youth.

I see them all as they once were
And as I am yet still
A man who owns no other skill
‘Cept kill and kill and kill.

You now expect me just forget?
To go back to NZ? To what?
I fear that all I know is death
Its looks, its tastes, its pointlessness.

Oh Death, I know you well and yet
You cheated me. Why me?
Why me in all this randomness?
Why not Bill or Joe or Fritz or Jacques?

Dear God in Heaven tell me how
I now can ‘settle down’
When life has proved so cheap, so brittle
After all I’ve seen, done, become?

What use to know a jam-tin bomb or
Judge the fall of screaming shell?
Least now I know I need not fear when
Padre’s talk of Hell for I have lived it – they call it War.

Pure chance, capricious fate will see me home
My duty duly done. But what of those who won’t be back?
Who can’t come back? Our restless ghostly Legions Lost
Lovers, Sons and Brothers all.

 Pat Quinn, NZ. 15 May 2007.
All Rights Reserved.

A Link that might be of interest to folk keen to know more about an ancestors NZ military service is: http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/130/cenotaph-database

It might be a bit sobering to type your Surname or Family Name into this Link and see how many men with your surname name have been killed by war in the last 100 years or so. It is the Commonwealth War Graves Commissions “Debt Of Honour” Database. http://www.cwgc.org/debt_of_honour.asp?menuid=14

Lest We Forget.

Paddy.
Armistice Day 2011.

Thinking of ‘our’ wars has made me remember names and men lost from families I know or am part of.

They include:

65709 Rifleman Eyrie Evans, NZRB KIA Le Cateau, France 8 October 1918. My daughters great great uncle.

NZ414549 Sgt (Navigator) RNZAF Andrew Joseph Doherty, killed in an Air Accident Canada 16 December 1942 aged 20. My uncle. 11 other men perished in that flying accident.

11/1140 Trooper Mervyn Herbert Sweet, Wellington Mounted Rifles KIA Gallipoli 9 August 1915 – me best buddies uncle. Trooper Sweet was killed by a 4.5 inch shell fired onto the Wellingtons position by a Royal Navy destroyer on barrage duty in the Dardanelles . This is the same gunfire incident which killed the C.O. of the Wellingtons, Lt. Colonel Malone and many others of our men.

Two of my uncles were captured in Greece and Crete in 1941 and used as forced labour in German run salt mines before surviving ‘The Great March’ of Allied POW’s in early 1945 as the Germans tried to flee the advancing Russian Armies, finally being ‘liberated’ as Allied troops advanced into Germany. (Under the Geneva Convention Rules, Officer Prisoners of War could not be forced or compelled to work but Other Ranks had to.)

Lest We Forget.

Paddy.

PS.
Please feel free to Remember here in this Thread, names and men from your Families, casualties of War...